The Book of Jade

darkness, a little light,
Sorrow and gladness, a weary mass,
Glimmer and falter and pass in blight.

So all our life, in waning flight,
Fadeth and faltereth, alas;
Passeth our sorrow and our delight,
As shadows pass.

Autumn Song

Weep, far autumnal skies,
Shrouded in misty air;
Weep, for thy solemn dearth,
And for thy chill despair,
Earth.

O stricken forest-trees,
Dead leaves that falter down
Solemnly to your sleep,
Golden, and red, and brown,
Weep.

Ballad

The lady rode ’neath the strange sky’s pall
Through the leafy woods funereal,
And all the length of her moonlit way
Was wanly white as the light of day;
Solemnly rob’d she rode along,
Unmindful of their droning throng
That throng’d her shadowy path, alas,
As though to see her funeral pass;
So through the mournful forest slow
Her palfrey’s silken feet did go,
Bearing her solemnly like a god
Over the shadow-haunted sod;
She laught to see the dead desire
That even now her life should tire,
She laught to think that to the earth
They call’d her that was full of mirth,
And though before her horse’s head
Throng’d the wan legions of the dead
Wanly attempting to stop her way,
She halted not for their legions gray,
But rode through the midnight’s mystic noon
Under the far gaze of the moon.
Then out from the dying woods at last
Into the moonlit plain she passt;
The misty stars were almost dead
Sunk in the heavens overhead,
While low down in the solemn skies
The white moon wan’d as one that dies.
Solemnly through the misty air
She rode with gold gems in her hair;
Bright were her holy eyes divine,
And red her lips as the red red wine.
At last in the unceasing night
Down from her palfrey she doth alight
By the strange murmuring of the sea;
She climbs the tall stair fearlessly,
And cometh at last to her chamber high
Beneath the wide face of the sky.
At last her journey being done,
She hath her golden stays undone,
And being a little wearied,
Hath laid her naked on her bed,
Thinking to slumber like the dead.

Changelessness

When Death shall touch thy body beautiful,
And thou that art of all the earth most fair
Shalt close thine eyes upon the shining air,
An unadorned gold urn to make full;

When that thou liest quietly inurn’d
In the dark bosom of the earth divine,
Being turned unto a heap of ashes fine,
For love of whose white face all men have burn’d;

Then in the earth, O beautiful white love,
Thy beauty shall not wholly end and cease,
When that thou art gone to endless peace;

Though all things beneath the sky above
Fade away, it knoweth not to die,
But abideth changeless endlessly.

Madonna

Anguish and Mourning are as gold to her;
She weareth Pain upon her as a gem,
And on her head Grief like a diadem;
And as with frankincense and tropic myrrh

Her face is fragrant made with utter Woe;
And on her purple gorgeous garment’s hem
Madness and Death and all the ways of them
Emblazoned in strange carousal show.

Within her delicate face are all things met,
And all the sad years and the dolorous days
Are but as jewels round her forehead set,

Add but a little glory to her face,
A little languor to her half-clos’d eyes,
That smile so strangely under the far skies.

Poppy Song

O poppy-buds, that in the golden air
Wave heavy hanging censers of delight,
Give me an anodyne for my despair;
O crimson poppy-blooms, O golden blight,
O careless drunken heavy poppy-flowers,
Make that the day for me be as the night.
Give me to lie down in your drowsy bowers,
That having breathed of your rich perfume,
My soul may have all-rest through all the hours;
So shall I lie within my little room,
While the poor tyrants of the world go by,
Restfully shrouded in your velvet gloom,
Beneath the wide face of the cloudless sky.

—Even so, when thou shalt eat of us,
Even so, thy life shall be a sleep,
Empty of all things fierce and piteous;
Even as a sailor on the tossing deep
Hears vaguely the vain tumult on the shore,
Shouts of the fighters, songs of them that reap.
Life is all vanity, a loathed sore,
A scatter’d dust, a vain and soiled heap.⁠—
Thou shalt have golden rest forevermore.

O poppy-flowers, golden, sleepy, sweet,
O yellow tawny fading blooms of gold,
Give unto me your holy fruit to eat;
Make me forget all things above the mould;
Make me forget that dolorous vow that sears,
Not to be lesser than the great of old;
Make me forget the heavy old dead years,
And all that lives from out the writhing past,
Old struggles, dead ambitions, buried tears;
And that white face that I shall see the last.

—Sweet is forgetfulness, most sweet to lie,
Sunken from sorrow, in our pleasant vale,
Where but the sun shines, and the clouds go by;
Even as to them that through deep waters sail
The toiling shore fades and becomes a sky,
And evermore behind the billows fail.
Sweet to forget the death-like things that were,
Green pastures where the clouds sail by on high,
Dead sundawns over pathless prairies fair,
And suns long sunk beneath the wall of the sky.

Under the sun my spirit lies alone,
Drunken with slumber and mild exstasy⁠ ⁠…
Sleep, sweet sleep, long unto mine eyes unknown.
Drops on me as ripe fruit drops from a tree;
My dim eyes see the valley poppy-strown;
The clouds fade and the gold sun over me,
And the world’s murmur sounds within my lair
Like the far tossing of some infinite sea;
Within the heavy slumber-laden air
All fades, all fades, and grows afar afar,
Leaving my soul alone, empty of care,
Even as happy long-dead bodies are.
Even so I slumber in my tireless close,
While the whole world fades like a fading star,
Dies like the perfume of a dying rose.

Consolation

Among all sorrows that my heart hath known,
Among all sorrows that my spirit keep
Forever buried ’neath their mountains steep,
Standeth one consolation, one alone.

I know that earth shall be for death a throne,
And evermore within their burials deep
The banded nations of the earth shall sleep,
Sunken in sepulchres of sculptur’d stone.

Then all the world shall be a quietness:
Dead women beautiful with their delights;
All they that had such striving and distress,

And endless weariness in all the lands,
White faces, eager heart-strings, soiled hands;
And peace shall hold the valleys and